Death Note Volume 11: Kindred Spirit by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

A slow build-up volume.

All the pieces move into position as we approach the final act. Near has it all figured out, but he refuses to act until he has proof of his deductions. Mikami is borne along by faith in his god of death.

Near is finally getting impressive. Some of that is the advantage of being a latecomer, finding everything that previous parties fought and died to uncover. Some of that is his mental skills, notably being able to observe several streams of information simultaneously. And then there is Mikami, who is easy to find because he does not bother to hide.

You have to love that character. Light envisions himself as a god of justice. Mikami just wants to be an agent of justice, joyously deleting the foes of order from existence. He is completely unalloyed. And he is stylish.

This volume has setup chapters, which probably worked well in the original run but are somewhat tedious in the collected edition. The characters are brought into proximity, and Near borrows L's solid steel cajones by calling Light, tipping his hand, and challenging him directly. This gives us a chapter of the "I know that he knows, and he knows that I know he knows, but can he prove..." that has not been fully present since before The Eight. It is good in doses, but an entire chapter of it wears. It is amusing to watch the other characters listening but not getting it.

For that chapter, it is amusing. Then it keeps happening for the entire volume. The characters drop some hints about their plans or point out elements that are important, but keep their cards close to their chests. This gives us several chapters of Light and Near announcing that they have plans then not bothering to tell anyone about them. They also repeatedly explain things that happened on-frame but do not describe their plans and preparations that we did not already see. This is not compelling reading.

It does seem that Light knows more about what Near knows than vice versa, especially since Light sets up disinformation for Near. That can't go well for Near. Light and Near are describing their conflict as if they were having a one-on-one fight, which they are lately, but Mello's absence is conspicuous. Ryuk is the other dog that has not barked for quite a long time.

Near's toys are becoming more amusing. The figurines and finger-puppets are excellent, a wonderful adaptation of a classic motif to Near's style. His other toys continue to be overly visually distracting in a way that L's sweet-tooth was not, but I hope that the illustrator had fun with those over the issues.

Misa: vapid, ill-mannered, ill-used tool. She was more interesting as a wild card. It is sad to think that she was an effective player for a volume or two, only to come to this caricature. They put the entire female cast in a room and failed to pass Bechdel's Rule. Pitiful.

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The Supergirls by Mike Madrid

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

This seemed like a good pick in the midst of the "and Death Note wastes another female character" theme.

"Fashion, feminism, fantasy, and the history of comic book heroines." This is a feminist history of superheroines in comic books.

This is a history of American views of women, a woman's place, and relationships, as seen through the prism of comic books. Which is to say, a series of kicks in the face. You can see the times reflected in entertainment, and they have long been deeply, deeply unhealthy.

Comics have often been about wish fulfillment, and female characters have been the victims of an unfortunate balance between attracting male and female readers, along with competing theories of what those readers want. It is like an instantiation of the virgin-whore complex, with strong, competent, bold characters that are subservient, demure, and never quite as good as their male counterparts.

The early days read like glints of proto-feminism, with heroines that save the day on their own. Then they go back to being the obedient wife or daughter, sometimes with a knowing smirk when someone comments on the heroine's adventures. They are making it in a man's world, but let's keep reminding everyone that it is a man's world.

Wonder Woman is the most famous and most feminist. She is part of DC's iconic Big Three, with Superman and Batman. She actually gets "Woman," not "Girl." She was conceived as a positive, strong role model for girls. And her creators were into bondage and submission, which fits in oddly and probably led to a lot of fetishes. (This is not exactly news or sensationalism; check any Wonder Woman archive.) And then the character spun out of control after World War II, going through many revamps and never seeing much popularity outside the Linda Carter era. Wonder Woman is an iconic image, but while anyone can give you the quick story on Superman or Batman, can you say much about Wonder Woman beyond her costume?

More often, we see the female counterparts of male superheroes, explicitly weaker and subservient. Whereas Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are disguises for their respective heroes, it is the heroic persona that is a play-act for the heroine, something exciting to do until she find the right man. We see Lois Lane, given second billing in her own series as "Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane," and even at her best depicted as needy, love-struck, bratty, and potentially the most annoying woman in the world. We see frighteningly unhealthy views of romantic relationships and power imbalances, where honesty and mutual respect are the only physically impossible things in comic book land.

It is tragic to see gender views that are so archaic and so recent. People who grew up with these cultural norms are still voting and running the country, and it does not get much more pro-equality on this planet. Worrisome.

The author seems not entirely immune. He refers to someone as "slatternly" unironically. He does a great job of presenting the attitude of an era without condemnation, inviting the reader to contribute his/her own, but he occasionally sounds like he is endorsing a decidedly un-feminist view rather than simply reporting that. It could be an accident of phrasing, or perhaps the poison afflicts even when you know to watch for it.

The book's organization mixes chronological with character-based. It takes a representative character of an era and follows her for a few decades. We see the careers of the heroines of the 40s play out. We see the full run of Sheena, queen of the jungle, then drop back to the 50s for super girlfriends. We see how Supergirl's character varies from her first appearance to her dovetailing with Lindsey Lohan. It is a good organization that shows the changing decades without unduly constricting the telling to simultaneous publications.

I found the organization highly intuitive in its arrangement of heroines. Whenever I thought, "Well what about X?" X appeared in the next chapter. This happened at least three times, so either the author and I are on the same wavelength or there is a natural structure.

I was not always thrilled with the emphasis. I want to believe that the incidents cited in older publications are representative, but I saw some picking and choosing of examples from the time when I was an avid comic reader (although it mostly keeps to the older icons). We might be interested in the worst example or "that one issue where," but do not treat it as the central tendency. Yes, it is easy to find someone online calling She-Hulk "a skank" rather than "a modern, sex-positive feminist," but it is easy to find someone online calling anyone a skank, while my sense of fandom leans towards the latter interpretation.

On the other hand, I know some worse examples in mainstream comics, so the author could have hit a few points harder with "can you believe they..."

The emphasis problem comes down to context. Much is made of the "when she was bad" stories, when the lady has an issue as the villain due to mind control, red kryptonite, super sleepwalking, miscommunication, or whatever. Almost every heroine profile mentions one. This makes up a narrative in which women are agents of deceit and treachery, too corrupted by power. This also ignores the fact that every single comic book character has this story. All of them. If you want to see the male heroes turn on their allies, it will not take you long to find Batman turning on the Justice League, Cyclops shooting people in the head, or Superman doing something insane monthly throughout the Silver Age. The more popular the character is, the more times it will have happened, for issues or years at a time. If it hadn't happened, it would mean the characters were not interesting enough to bother.

This sort of thing creates a focus on the negative, on superheroines' worst eras or features, which leads one to wonder back at the introduction. If female depictions in comics are so horrible, why would one be drawn to them?

The truth is that Sturgeon's Revelation applies universally. Most of everything is dreck, with shining successes worth remembering. Even for those shining successes, there are going to be lots of writers and authors who had bad runs. They may even have ruined a character for years. This is not the exclusive domain of female characters, and it should not be taken to dim the brightest lights.

The book ends on a positive note, but it makes the narrative a bit neat and suggests a narrow view of feminism. The neatness comes from over-imposing a story arc on heroine history, one that started in condescension, muddled through confusion, went through a cheesecake phase, and ends in maternal strength. Youth, adolescence, young womanhood, motherhood. That straightens out a lot of messy and overlapping lines, and it downplays both earlier successes and current weaknesses in the portrayal of female characters. Gail Simone is a shining light as a female comic book writer, but she is not the only one.

That narrow view is the nurturing, maternal one. It is a common feminist theme that women are uniquely strong in a loving way that protects and builds things up rather than fostering violence and aggression, and so on. It is a viable theme, but it tends to take over the character and leave little space between daughter and mother. You get young women who are victims, virgins, or harlots; you get older women who are loving mothers or bitter spinsters. There needs to be a larger space carved out in between for female characters as individuals first, themselves before their relationships. Otherwise we just have a new variation on the virgin-whore complex we started with.

The author is better than I am giving him credit for there. Many things are mentioned but not focused on, and it would take a much higher page count to explore the nuances that interest me. Without drawing much attention to it, Mr. Madrid mentions female leaders for every major superhero team, including the Authority, JLA, JSA, Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Legion of Superheroes. The threads of female leadership are never woven into a chapter addressing how this fits into a narrative where heroines are second-class heroes. Similarly, though I note the maternal ending, the last chapter cites several heroines who are individuals first rather than someone's mother or daughter, and it follows a She-Hulk chapter (and she is certainly not depicted as either). Our author does not call attention to it because it does not fit the narrative.

Let us end on that note that comics, like any medium taken as a whole, is a cacophony rather than a symphony. There are trends and themes, but there is no "comic book industry" that works with a single mind. There are several publishers, and within them many authors going in different directions, sometimes in intentional subversion of any editorial direction. Writing the book demands imposing some structure on it, but at any given time, someone will be coloring outside the lines.

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PS I could have stood a bit more on how the Comics Code Authority imposed the lesser female roles on the industry. With explicit restrictions on how female characters could appear and act, there were limits on their use and an incentive just to leave women out as much as possible. Regulatory agencies, developed under threat of explicit legislative regulation, rarely do much to further art. They also reinforce the existing power structure rather than supporting the development of, in this case, new female voices.

Death Note Volume 10: Deletion by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

Everything runs off the rails and still keeps going. Pick your favorite way this could all go horribly wrong for everyone involved!

Near makes inroads into L's team. Light anoints a new Kira. Mello is stuck on the sidelines.

Visuals get the first note: that is one heck of a cover. The others have had some great character illustrations and images, excellent poster work, but this one captures the moment in the series and the spirit of the whole. The use of lighting and bright colors makes it stand apart from earlier covers, along with the layout and images echoing Christian iconography (with Light as God). And take a closer look at those cherubs.

Near gathers information well. He deduces well, although he seems to be placing a very strong Bayesian prior on L's judgment; usually wise, but perhaps inadvisable given L's experience just before the time skip. Near suddenly develops insight into people, rather than deductive analysis about facts. I am not sure if there was an undertone I missed, if it just never came up, if this is supposed to represent hidden depths, or the author just never considered how his autistic detective might approach human interactions. There might be enough evidence to support his conclusions here, but I also suspect a bit of cheating in that the author and readers know more than Near, so we may not see what he would need to know to make the intuitive jump and catch up with us.

That would be a strange problem for this author, given how much the first half of the series depends on "I know that he knows that I know..." Then again, this is about who knows what, not the recursive psychological games. Someone out there must have tracked who knew what and did Near have enough information to make that deduction fairly.

Near has a moment of quasi-effectiveness here, or at least a good tactic. His gathering his robots as he leaves headquarters is a great visual, more of a child you would want to protect rather than his annoying dithering about with toys in his other scenes.

Mello is stuck investigating. Maybe the author is planning a long game for him, with this entire volume setting it up, but it looks more like showing him doing the right thing and Light still winning.

The theme of the first half is doing things right and still losing. Everyone has plans that they execute properly but are countered in part by their opponents. For Light, that looks a lot like having events spiral out of control even as he is putting things together.

Light is ridiculously lucky, unless we can get some evidence that he knew more about Mikami before. He found the perfect person. I hope that goes badly, as Mikami is too perfect, and Light faces someone who is more of a true believer in Kira than he is. Idealists are dangerous.

I also wonder when Light will have problems with basing executions on media reports. It is not as though he is vetting all his victims thoroughly and giving them a fair trial. There is no chance for appeal or showing an erroneous arrest after you have a heart attack and die. How many innocents has Kira killed? How easy would it be to make a false arrest or accusation and have your victim disappear?

How easy would it be for someone to do that to Light? Similarly, how easy would it be to reveal who L is and that he is hunting Kira?

As I said, pick your favorite way this could all go horribly wrong for everyone involved.

Did Aizawa just quietly become the hero of this series?

Lastly, we have a new role for a prominent female character. In a shocking turn of events, she is an easily manipulated, subservient tool of the main characters.

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Death Note Volume 9: Contact by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

Mello is shaping up nicely. Near is not.

Light takes the fight to Mello as Kira advances on the world stage. Near's deductions advance as his sphere of influence is increasingly circumscribed.

I keep expecting more from Near and not getting it. His toys are like L's candy, only far more visible, distracting, and childish. His deductions are on par with L's, maybe better, but he lacks any other skills to make something happen as a result. He does not seem to understand people well enough to engage in Light's manipulations, so much so that his own staff is a jump ahead of him. A character is in a bad way when you note that he lacks L's social skills. He fares poorly as a major player; he would work well as a tool in the service of a major player.

Which he may be becoming due to Mello's effectiveness. Near presents the threat of exposure to L, Kira, and Light; Mello might just kill everyone to prove he can. And maybe he can, once he gets his feet under him, but it remains to be seen how much he can do in the long run.

Near and Mello do interact well. They show an inverse of L and Light's relationship: venomously polite but the only underlying hostility is competitiveness.

For the other contrast, this volume reverses the flow of the previous one, with Light counter-attacking both Mello and Near. Only one completes within the volume, and it is still nice to see someone with contingencies so that not everything goes exactly as planned. They are both annoying twerps of different shades, but they each present some sort of threat to Light.

Mello, despite what you have seen in movies, you should not hold a gun sideways. You may think it makes you look "gangsta," but you should have spent enough time with real criminals not to be doing that. This series shows the very different Japanese attitude towards guns, which are more unusual over there. There is also the police hesitance against overwhelming force combined with a calm assurance of the death penalty.

We have a new, named female character! She then immediately goes to the shower scene as she discusses her comfort with being a tool of the major characters. Oh, well then. Maybe she and Misa could be friends.

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Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Rating - 4: worth reading more than once (buy it)

Audrey Hepburn was far better than Holly Golightly deserved.

Holly is informally an escort, paying her rent with the $50 "powder room change" her dates provide. She loves to talk and hates to answer questions about herself. She is drifting, glamorously, gloriously, desperately. She is running, sometimes from things, sometimes to others, sometimes just to run.

The plot is inessential. It is convenient, to move mirrors around Holly, but the characters and events are just there to show her off from various angles. The book is more successful in this than the film, which lets the plot get in the way during the second half.

Instead we have a character study in 100 pages. It is a novella that delivers value quickly and consistently. It will support re-reading well because it spends little time on exposition, plot, or anything else you might skim past on a re-read under the rubric of "I already know this." A similarly dense action movie would have an explosion every minute or two.

Actually, the plot is not bad. There are a few events that spur action, a few threads uniting the story across brief episodes in Holly's life. The story is almost entirely character-driven, however, so the events feel like a natural growth from them rather than something the author imposes on them.

Our narrator is a nameless cypher. I have seen him described as an author avatar. I did not pick up a gay vibe on my first read-through; is that a better explanation for Holly's casual nudity in his presence, or just that she gets naked in front of male audiences frequently and considers him harmless? At any rate, he is happy just to bask in her presence and recount it for us.

Holly is an interesting mess. She wants attention, preferably all of it, but definitely on her terms. She wants to tell you things but does not want you to ask about them. She lies casually and may believe any number of her own lies; she becomes a sort of unreliable narrator for the narrator. She is caring, cruel, and callous. She is whimsical. She is cunning but not necessarily bright.

If you noticed that our narrator is not the film's dashing gigolo, you should also pick up that Holly's heart has at best streaks of gold. She is a user and a schemer, happy to hurt for her immediate gain, momentary amusement, or to spite another. She really would be happy if it worked out well for everyone, I'm sure, but she is looking out for number one first.

If only she knew what she wanted. She wants love and a home and happiness. She has no idea how to get them, or why, or how to recognize them, or how to feel safe once she does have them. Holly is a tragic character because she is not a dynamic one. She cannot grow as a person. She is stuck, her head barely above water, making waves so that no passing wave can come along and drown her.

She is a variable character, though not dynamic. She flits. She flirts. She obsesses and moves on. She has repeatedly found her savior and run away (or driven him off).

Some of this is maintained in the film version of the character, although it sweetens her considerably. The film version would never curse or talk about shacking up with a lesbian so she could have a wife to do housework. The film version is still a gold digger but not a strip miner. Book-Holly is goes beyond thoughtless or self-centered.

On that film note, how ridiculous was that ending? Besides making "Fred" a mirror of her first john in what was intended as a romantic scene, you know what happens within a week or a month of the film's ending because you saw it a half-dozen ways within the film. The book does not bother, stays truer to the character, and tells you the ending up front so that you can be content to enjoy the scenery along the way.

Holly is, however, enormously charismatic and apparently fun to be around. It is fun to see her through our narrator's prism. She is a great character, darker and more nuanced than the film version, highly enjoyable in her fits and starts.

My edition came with three short stories. Worthwhile. I feel certain that I have read "A Christmas Memory" before; perhaps it is part of a standard English textbook these days.

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Death Note Volume 8: Target by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

Mello is not likable, but he is effective.

L, M, and N, as it were -- machinations promise to get interesting as everyone is trying to kill or catch everyone else while no one really knows who anyone else is. Mello advances while Light and Near are becoming clearer on what the situation is, and then the situation changes from an unexpected direction.

That was vague enough, wasn't it? Our new competitors do not know enough to manipulate the pieces individually, but at least one of them is a great planner, and everyone is being careful.

Near gets more "screen time" and seems about as likable as Mello, although annoying from a different direction. Probably a smart guy but looks down on everyone despite having accomplished absolutely nothing so far. That irritation and condescension seems to be his only character trait. He may eventually become a character, but he is just a story device at present.

Mello may be an annoying twerp, but he is quite canny. He uses others well, keeping danger at a remove or two. He realizes that he does not need to hold the power in his own hands to have control. Impulsive, but he could be the most effective planner so far. I expect him to die soon, or else someone with his drive must take over the entire plot and take over the story in the last act.

He still looks like a girl, but an increasingly crazy one. Everyone gets to look a bit more insane; the plot must be coming along well.

Misa keeps trying to get back into the story. She is ill-used, by Light and the author. But she's trying, darn it. If there is any justice, she will have the appropriate emotional reaction and all Hell will break loose. I do not expect that. She, like the entire female cast except perhaps Rem, is too passive.

It is nice to see Light being out-foxed. Others can make plans as airtight as his, and his can be thwarted by unpredictable circumstances. If Near turns out to be less worthless than he seems to think everyone else is, this could get rather exciting. Or both the new challengers might have nothing in reserve once their initial gambits run out; the series will become tiresome if characters keep appearing, presenting a threat, then dying at the end of the arc.

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When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Rating - 3.5: worth reading, parts worth re-reading (borrow or buy it)

Despite foreshadowing, it is not clear for the first half where this book is going. We have some plot markers, but we mostly seem to be following the protagonist through a year of her adolescence. Then the character development arc comes together in the third quarter and the plot in the fourth, and this becomes a great read.

The mysterious notes started appearing right about the time Miranda's best friend abandoned her and her mother found out she was going to be on The $20,000 Pyramid. She gets a new friend, picked up when the snotty rich girl was dramatically de-friending, and then they get a boy friend (potential boyfriend?) and a lunchtime job at a local sandwich shop. But where are these notes coming from and how does the writer know what is going to happen?

Some of us have doubted the wisdom of the Newbery committee over the years, but then we got The Graveyard Book and this back-to-back. It is not quite as exceptional a pairing as Bridge to Terabithia and The Westing Game, but this is a very enjoyable book.

Maybe this is easier to do with an adolescent, but our protagonist is a rounded, dynamic character. Other people are as well, although they may not change so much as Miranda's perspective on them does. In 200 pages for young readers, this book manages more character development and growth than most adult books with 500 pages of dense text.

Miranda's character arc is developing empathy, realizing that others are also suffering and doing the best they can given their circumstances. It is an arc, a gradual movement with epiphanies and setbacks. She sees herself and others trying, sometimes failing, sometimes not really trying because they do not know how to make things right or cannot bring themselves to do it.

The realization that others are seeing the same problems and suffering is profound. It is not unique or original, but it is critically important. Its lack is common enough that Miranda can have that same realization on multiple issues in successive chapters without its seeming repetitive, forced, or messianic. "I could have made this better a long time ago. Why haven't I? Why don't I?"

You could think of the first half of the book as setting up all the ways this realization can take place. It is not; it is a normal set-up of a life, explaining the people and situations around. Our world just happens to be rife with opportunities to notice others. We are introduced to everything through Miranda's eyes, and it seems natural to accept some things as the way they are rather than needing reconsideration or fixing. There are surprises in plain sight, waiting to be noticed.

That leads to the other thing this book does exceptionally: foreshadowing. The notes foretelling the future are blatant and ominous, letting many subtle bits fly under the radar. Ms. Stead puts Chekhov's gun on the mantle and manages to make it look like a decorative piece. When it comes back 100 pages later, you might not realize that you already saw it.

Rather than spoil any of those, let us remark that it pushes the book above a 3 rating because you will want to see how all the pieces came together in retrospect. That will not require re-reading for some points; some of them are explicitly cited. In at least one other case, you get the explanation before it happens, when it does not make sense, and might not notice that events are unfolding exactly as you were told.

I do not go so far as a 4 because the first half is enjoyable but not great, and any decent reading retention will get you all the value. I recommend re-skimming it to see the subtler foreshadowing, but the exposition does not have value independent of the story.

The second half is heartwarming and bittersweet and excellent. I must go get someone else to read this book.

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Death Note Volume 7: Zero by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Rating - 3.5 worth reading, parts worth re-reading (borrow or buy it)

When these guys get back to the main plot, they're not messing around.

Light's gambit comes together, putting him back in the game against L in a surprisingly strong position. New challengers to Kira arise.

The first arc in this book is excellent, clearly a 4. I said before that we knew where Light's plan had to lead, and it does go there, but the parts left unmentioned take it much further. Light plotted out three volumes worth of the plot beforehand, and it is very impressive to watch it play out in this one. The pawns can see themselves being manipulated, comment on it, then carry out their parts anyway due to the way things are set up.

I love it when a plan comes together.

The book ends on the beginning of a next arc. This is an unfortunate arrangement of the volumes, because it is a horrid stopping place. It is not long enough to establish the new arc, just that a new arc has begun. At this point, Near comes across as an autistic knock-off of L, without enough dialogue to take him anywhere interesting, and the background for Mello does nothing to mitigate the constant urge to smack him.

Mello's art is problematic. It goes beyond androgynous; I did not realize he was male until someone pointed it out. He lacks masculine facial features but has very feminine hair and outfits. He has one pose that looks masculine. Near is more classically cherubic.

The art around the time skip is good. Characters are older but still themselves, most visibly Sayu but most notably Aizawa. The maturation in his look is simple but effective. Death Note uses black backgrounds for the negative space when outside normal time, and this effect stacks up during the time skip; it is a dark time.

Light comes across strongly in both text and visuals. The images of his megalomania are sufficiently overblown, and his facial expressions say what the words need not.

I am still looking for a decent female character. I had brief hopes for Mello, which the character ruined before I realized the gender issue. Sayu may have potential, or not. I don't really have hopes for either except that Mello can become less annoying or else die quickly. Neither seems immediately likely.

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